Practice Is Funny That Way. For Days

The Evidence Is That People Who Enter Hospice Don't Have Shorter Lives. In Many Cases They Are Longer.

Good Checklists, On The Other Hand Are Precise. They Are Efficient, To The Point, And Easy To Use Even In The Most Difficult Situations. They Do Not Try To Spell Out Everything--a Checklist Cannot Fly A Plane. Instead, They Provide Reminders Of Only The Most Critical And Important Steps--the Ones That Even The Highly Skilled Professional Using Them Could Miss. Good Checklists Are, Above All, Practical.

You Want To Ensure People Can Do It Right 99 Percent Of Time. When We Have To Fire One Of Our Surgical Trainees, It Is Never Because They Dont Have The Physical Skills But Because They Dont Have The Moral Skills - To Practise And Admit Failure.

In The End, People Don't View Their Life As Merely The Average Of All Its Moments-which, After All, Is Mostly Nothing Much Plus Some Sleep. For Human Beings, Life Is Meaningful Because It Is A Story. A Story Has A Sense Of A Whole, And Its Arc Is Determined By The Significant Moments, The Ones Where Something Happens. Measurements Of People's Minute-by-minute Levels Of Pleasure And Pain Miss This Fundamental Aspect Of Human Existence. A Seemingly Happy Life Maybe Empty. A Seemingly Difficult Life May Be Devoted To A Great Cause. We Have Purposes Larger Than Ourselves.

As Economists Have Often Pointed Out, We Pay Doctors For Quantity, Not Quality. As They Point Out Less Often, We Also Pay Them As Individuals, Rather Than As Members Of A Team Working Together For Their Patients. Both Practices Have Made For Serious Problems.